Vacuum infiltration with other species

Several people asked that I post the responses to my question about using
the vacuum infiltration transformation with other plant species. There
were four responses from people who had tried or are trying the method on
other species. These responses are below.
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>>About your query, as a matter of fact I have tried B. napus vacuum
>infiltration: canola quality cultivars (e.g., westar, oscar) plus a rapid
>cycling variety. In addtion, we gave it a shot with rapid cycling B. rapa as
>well. Didn't work. We pretty much followed Andrew Bent's procedure, but we
>had no success. I have heard from another researcher that she could
>not get rapid cycling B rapa to transform either. However, B. napus is so
>easy to transform (although cutting out the tissue culture part would be
>nice), and is so fast, that the time to progeny would not be decreased.
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>Indeed we tried the infiltration on Brassica napus and it didn't work,
>but we don't try many plants. The problem for rapeseed is:
> - the size of the plant at flowering stage (because of the size of
>the vaccum chamber).
> - the amount of seeds after infiltration.
>We infiltrated some stessed plants because the flowering plants are
>smaller. But after infiltration we harvested only about 50 seeds/plants.
>For arabidopsis we can have 5 000 seeds/plants and select 10
>transformants but at most time 1 to 4 transformants.
>So perhaps we didn't succed because we didn't test enough plants.
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>one of my Lab members tried vacuum transformation of pepper last year.
>The result was not good.
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>If you hear otherwise I would be very interested, because
>I am currently testing VacInf on Brassicas (RCB rapa for
>fast turnaround - perhaps RCB napus or Westar IF it works
>on rapa).
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Curt Palm
University of Chicago Phone: 312 702 3856
Department of Ecology and Evolution Fax: 312 702 9740
1101 East 57th Street
Chicago, IL 60637-1573 email: curt at pondside.uchicago.edu
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